Armageddon - Max Hastings [320]
In Friesoythe on 12 April, it was reported that the commanding officer of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders of Canada had been shot in the back by a civilian. The Canadian divisional commander, Christopher Vokes, was already angered by other incidents in which civilians had fired upon his men. He ordered the entire town bulldozed in retribution. Only when this process had been completed was it learned that in reality the Argylls’ colonel had been killed by a German soldier with a Schmeisser.
The 21st Army Group faced spasms of hard fighting. Second Fife & Forfar Yeomanry fought one of hundreds of similar tiny actions on 5 April, at Glissen. Lieutenant Frank Fuller was leading the battalion, and as they approached the town could see little sign of enemy defences. “No washing,” his operator reported laconically over the radio. Then they spotted enemy infantry in ditches. The tanks pulled off the road, making way for the infantry to move forward. A faust hit Fuller’s tank. The young officer bailed out. He was promptly hit by machine-gun fire, as was his gunner. His shaken wireless-operator came on the air and announced that he was remaining in the turret. The rest of the crew were dead. After an hour of fighting, the surviving Germans raised their hands. They proved to be very young members of 12th SS Panzer, who were taken to the rear. The British always hated the Hitler Jugend Division. “Fanaticism is nasty,” said Captain “Dim” Robbins. “They were absolute sods—incredibly arrogant, even as prisoners,” in the words of Corporal Patrick Hennessy. On this occasion, however, a British officer observed bitterly that the young prisoners were “blubbering.” Their action had changed nothing, save to delay the advance an hour or so and to kill a young officer and three men. A comrade noticed Fuller’s body, “just recognizable,” lying in a ditch as he drove past. He remembered that the lieutenant was newly married.
Two days later, Major William Steel-Brownlie drove his tank round the corner of a German village at 30 m.p.h., to ram full-tilt a large chest-of-drawers which a German family was struggling to remove from a burning house. “Clothing and underwear were caught up and whirled round in the tracks.” His machine-gunner hosed a handful of German defenders fleeing the scene: “Was it cruel to batter retreating troops? There was always the thought that they might be reorganized and waiting for us next day or the day after, as well as thoughts about Frank Fuller and many like him. Not far away was another family rescuing furniture from their burning home, but in the circumstances one’s reaction was simply: so what?”
“Once we got into Germany, we could do anything, knock down anything,” said Captain David Fraser. “There were very few inhibitions. We were told: ‘If you need to burn a village—burn it.’ ” On 12 April, the British director of military intelligence reported on the mood of civilians in the path of the armies: “Germans are becoming increasingly bitter at bombing of targets of negligible military value, and caution us against appointment of Jewish burgomeisters which [they say] is a pyschological mistake and which militates against co-operation of German civilian population.”
As the advance gathered pace, at last for some men exhilaration overcame fear. Charles Farrell, a Scots Guards squadron commander, thought as he drove his Sherman across Germany of Christopher Marlowe’s line: “Is it not passing brave to be a king and ride in triumph through Persepolis?” At Rathau on the Aller, the CO of 5th Royal Tanks advanced on foot to take a cautious look into the town before his tanks moved in. He encountered one of his own officers, a huge Welshman named John Gwilliam who later captained his country’s rugby team, “carrying a small German soldier by the